


The Measure Of Their Days

by tielan



Series: Fire And Ice: MCU Jaeger AU [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jaegers, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, Resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-18 16:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8168420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Damn straight they're helping save the world.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merriman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/gifts).



 

Wanda is sitting at a table in the mess hall wondering if this will be the measure of her days hereafter when Steve Rogers drops into a seat opposite her, no sign of his co-pilot.

“Hey.”

She’s a little surprised to see him. “Weren’t you in the Icebox last week?”

“We were transferred over. Pentecost got tired of Sam catting around.”

Unwelcome realisation dawns. Rogers is also one of the few active-status pilots to have lost a co-pilot while Drifting in a fight. “I don’t need a keeper, Steve.”

“No,” he agrees in that level way that means he’s about to turn the tables. “But from what I hear, you could do with a friend.”

His gaze dares her to protest the term; Wanda isn’t inclined to object. Steve was good to her and Pietro when they first arrived in the program – and that amidst the lingering scandal of his ‘sex video’, and the shock of his compatibility with a new co-pilot. But his presence is unexpected, and in the context of her loss, grating.

“Are you here to tell me that there will be someone else for me? That I should mourn, have a torrid affair, and get over it?” The renewing of her grief makes her a little cruel, and she wouldn’t blame him for walking away right now and demanding to be reassigned back to the Icebox.

He’s more controlled than that. “Maybe skip the affair,” he says. “But, no, I’m not here to say any of that. Just that...I know where you are now. It’s...It’s not easy to lose a co-pilot in a fight; and worse to have to keep fighting even after they’re gone.”

That simply, her body begins to shake. The fragile facade of her composure is torn away and the empty hole claws at her like _kaiju_ talons. Her hands cover her mouth to stifle the sob that escapes, the rough weave of the finger gloves dragging against her chapped lips. She fights the weight of it for a moment, her eyes stinging. Then she blinks and tears spill down her cheeks and splatter on the table in ungainly drops.

Steve pulls out a pocket packet of tissues and passes it across the table. “I came prepared.”

The comment brings a smile, even in the midst of grief – all the more because he’s never struck her as particularly good at being comforting – but she takes the tissue with watery gratefulness and dabs at her eyes, trying not to smudge her eyeliner.

 _It takes you so long to get ready,_ Pietro had complained as a teenager. _You don’t need all that on you anyway._

And that just makes her teary again.

There are steps by the table and a voice that might be strident if the speaker raised it. “Made her cry, I see.”

Wanda looks up in time to see Maria Hill sit down beside Steve, who looks past her. “Where’s Pepper?”

She rolls her eyes at the mention of her co-pilot of _Titanium Stiletto_ , and flicks him on the nose. “Having phone sex with Stark.”

“I didn’t need to know that.”

“You asked.” She glances over at Wanda. “Maximoff.”

“Hill.” They’ve never been friendly – Maria came to piloting late and was never one of Wanda’s intimates, and her co-pilot came from outside the Jaeger program entirely.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

The snap would take most people aback. Maria Hill is not most people. “Do you have a couple of hours this afternoon?”

“Maria—” Steve blinks over the hand that covers his mouth.

“ _Crimson Typhoon_ has been reporting interface issues in the PONS for the three-way Drift. Dr. Lightcap was wondering if you’d be willing to consult with her – although she understands if you’re not up to it.”

There’s a moment when Wanda feels intensely bitter; she’s grieving her brother and they want _consulting_ from her? Then a memory rises up.

 _It would mean working with Stark,_ she’d said to Pietro the night before they entered the final phase of pilot training, all but assured that the new Jaeger, _Silver Hex_ , was theirs.

 _It will mean helping save the world,_ had been his answer.

That’s what they’re—what _she’s_ here for. Wanda swallows the instinctive denial that rises up in her. As much as she feels like she can’t do anything right now, Dr. Caitlin Lightcap, creator of the neural interface between Drifting pilots and their Jaeger, needs her help. That’s not a small thing.

She takes a deep breath. “I am up to it, and I will.”

Steve regards her, worried, and she shakes her head at him. It’s work. Work is something she can _do_.

And it’s helping save the world.

\--

Days come and days go.

After working with Dr. Lightcap on the development of the Mark IV Jaeger _Crimson Typhoon_ , Wanda applies to go into Jaeger repairs, and is accepted.

“Are you certain?” Natasha asks her across Skype, calling in the morning/evening after Wanda is accepted into one of the worker shifts. “You need not if you don’t wish.”

Clint Barton appears over Natasha’s shoulder in the camera frame, resting his chin on her shoulder. “There’s no shame in getting out, you know.”

“I know. But I need something to do,” she says frankly. “Or I will go mad.”

There is counselling – PPDC mandated – but Wanda is only willing to take so much poking and prodding, and the last thing she wants is to lie in the rooms she shared with Pietro as his absence wears upon her, or watch the other pilots go out to do what she and Pietro used to do.

She would like to ask Natasha if it gets easier; but, watching Barton press a light kiss to Natasha’s neck, the words stick in her throat. Natasha may understand what it is to lose a co-pilot but, like Steve, she was fortunate enough to find another person Drift-compatible with her.

The odds, so the Drift psychs say, are astronomical – never mind that it has already happened twice in the program. Still, Wanda does not want anyone but her brother in her head. And she does not wish to give up what they fought for; that unselfish heroism that Pietro carried far more fiercely than she.

Of course it feels a little strange to get up, put on the bleak and shapeless cover-alls, to plait back her hair beneath a plain cap, and join the crowd of shift workers clocking on for the morning shift. Wanda crowds awkwardly into the elevator, bumping elbows with a tattooed giant of a Pacific Islander, and a lanky South-Asian type who nods at her when she apologises and speaks with a distinctly Australian accent.

“First shift?”

“Yes.” She braces for the inevitable question, but just receives a wry smile .

“Good to have you on board, then.”

The elevator carries them up to the tech ‘lounge’ where the supervisors are waiting to hand out the day’s assignments, and Wanda waits a little to the side, enduring the looks and the murmurs from the people who spot her and wonder at her presence.

She’s assigned to a work group, to a tall man whose name she doesn’t quite get, but whose expression is solemn and sober, with none of the jokery of the others supervisors.

“Oh, you’ve been assigned to Vish,” says her company from the elevator. “Nice. He’s a bit weird, but a decent sort. Maybe a bit serious.” A workgroup is called across the room, and the woman flashes Wanda a brief smile. “Have a good one.”

As the workgroups go off to their assignments, Wanda starts picking her way across the room to ‘Vish’ as the woman nicknamed him. It was an odd name that they called out during assignments, she thinks. Very British, and yet he looks more Indian in his colouring. Sub-continental, perhaps, is the correct term for it. Either way, ‘a bit weird, but a decent sort’ is, if not perhaps the most encouraging description, not a terrible character reference either.

“Ranger Maximoff,” he says when she approaches. “Welcome to my workgroup. I am Jervis Nortlun, but most people call me 'Vish'. You have a good understanding of the Mark IIIs?”

“Mostly from inside the Conn Pod.”

“Yes. I am sorry about your brother.”

“Most people are.” She winces. “That is not— I apologise. That was...impolite, when you were only offering—”

“Are you certain that you wish to return to work? Now? At this time?” The question is gentle, with none of the impatience or exasperation that might be expected of a man who has a crew to run and giant fighting robots to fix, and who doubtless doesn’t want to be herding a grieving former pilot along. Wanda feels ashamed of her outburst.

“Yes.” She swallows down the trembling emptiness that threatens to swallow her whole. “I do.”

He stares at her with a disconcertingly direct look. His eyes are a light grey, oddly pale in the dark olive skin of his skin. And the expression in them gives Wanda the impression he can see through to her soul, if people could actually do that.

“Very well,” he says. “We will start you in the Conn Pod of _Matador Fury_ and work from there.”

–

It’s work. It’s not particularly fantastic work, but it’s work Wanda can do.

It forces her out of bed, out of the rooms the PPDC hasn’t yet reassigned, out into the world. It forces her back into the program, that necessary push to complete what she and Pietro started, even if they can’t finish it together.

She starts having nightmares. Dr. Ross gives her medications for depression and for anxiety, and patiently explains to Wanda what each is likely to do to her. Revolted and reluctant, Wanda leaves the medications on the bathroom ledge for a week, during which her sleep is interrupted and sketchy, her dreams stained red with Pietro’s blood, her mornings stained with sweat and tears.

It’s Steve who confronts her about her state of mind one afternoon as she’s coming off shift. All things considered, she would have expected Hill to be the more likely candidate for telling her to suck it up and deal.

“Dr. Ross says she issued you medication. Are you taking it?” Her expression gives her away, and he frowns. “Don’t be stubborn. Take the medication. If I’d taken it sooner...maybe I wouldn’t have crashed and burned so badly.”

“You seem to have it mostly back together again,” she observes as they pass through the Shatterdome corridors, people nodding to them as they pass.

Steve shakes his head in denial. “That’s mostly just luck. And I’m still taking the medication. So don’t be like me; do better.”

She takes the medication and does better. A little.

Then the day comes that Wanda has been dreading. _Silver Hex_ has been deemed repairable, and will be fixed and sent out with a new pilot pairing.

“There is no need for you to do this,” Vish tells her as they cross the catwalk that leads to the Conn-Pod gantry.

“I cannot change what happened,” she says, and enters the opening sequence, trusting that it hasn’t yet been recoded. “But I can control how I react. I will.”

The door slides open, but she doesn’t look into the lightening darkness inside, but up at the man who has slid his hand into hers. “Wanda.”

There is understanding in his eyes. Kindness, gentleness – and more, so much more than she realised before this. She may walk into the nightmare of her own memories, but he won’t let her go alone.

She smiles, and squeezes his hand. Steeled for the worst, she walks into the familiar capsule, and immediately sees the harness from which Pietro dangled for four hours while she fought their last _kaiju_. She doesn’t realise how grief has clawed her until after she realises that the shirt into which she has sobbed for the last however long is soaked through with her tears – in much the same way that she doesn’t remember the hours that the Conn-Pod recording indicate she screamed out until her throat was raw and the _kaiju_ was dead.

However, when she lifts her face from Vish’s shoulder, intending to apologise, he simply puts a finger over her lips and shakes his head.

Later, after he’s seen her back to her quarters, Wanda realises it’s the closest she’s felt to anyone since Pietro died.

\--

“So,” Alison Metisi says conversationally as they settle into the lounges of their favourite drinking bar. “What’s this I hear about you and my man Vish, Maximoff?”

“ _Your_ man Vish?” Carol laughs as she leaves her order with Jess and plunks herself down beside Alison. “Does Hank know about this?”

“Hank is Hank,” Alison counters with a shrug, “Vish is...different. Not in the common way, perhaps, but sweet. So,” dark eyes fix Wanda, “spill.”

Wanda shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “He is...sweet. It is...nice.”

“Well, _there’s_ a ringing endorsement for you.” Carol stretches out her legs, briefly retracting them when she bumps Wanda under the table. “Me, I prefer them with a little more go-get.”

“Yeah, but Sam Wilson goes and gets everything that will let him lay hands on,” is Metisi’s retort.

“Oh, and that wasn’t Tendo Choi you were flirting with the other day?”

“It was, but that’s not the point. The point is that Wanda has been seducing Vish on the sly.” Alison smiles and although it’s a polite smile, there are teeth behind it. “And Vish isn’t the kind who just climbs into bed with anyone.”

In fact, before Wanda, he’d never climbed into bed with anyone. That had been a surprise to her, although not a deterrent. However virgin Vish had been before they had sex, he certainly hadn’t been _innocent_.

Wanda admits her relationship with Vish has come as something of a surprise. Perhaps it’s because he is so unlike Pietro – considering and thoughtful, where Pietro would leap into something with mercurial intent. And Wanda was his twin and his counter and his balance, but more often than not she fully agreed with his choice of action, and plunged in after. He was the head of the spear – the arrowing point – she was the haft – the weight and force behind it.

Vish has a gentleness about him that is nevertheless grounded in the sense of unimaginable strength. And his tenderness eases the grief and, yes, anger, she sometimes feels at Pietro’s absence.

She hopes she gives him even a fraction of the joy and comfort and pleasure he gives her. She hasn’t asked – she hasn’t dared. It’s one thing to sleep with a man; it’s another thing entirely to fall in love with him.

“You wish to know my honourable intentions towards him, then?” Wanda asks, pointedly. “He is...a good man. Quiet. Different. I like him and I will continue to enjoy him as along as he is willing.” She hopes it will be a while. “Is that sufficient notice of intent?”

Alison grins. “I’m just giving you fair warning: if you hurt Vish in any way, shape or form, I and mine will come for you.”

“Noted.”

Dira returns with the drinks then, and the conversation wanders off, with discussions about the nature of the Breach – the ‘portal’ through which the _kaiju_ come – and where it leads. A month ago, they attempted to send a bomb through, and all anyone will say is that ‘the results were not quite what were expected’ which everyone takes to mean ‘it failed’ since another _kaiju_ came through the next week.

“Rumour has it, a guy got caught up in the explosion.” Alison always knows the best gossip. “One of the deep sea crew, I guess – there was a lots hush-hush about it.”

“Why the secrecy?”

Carol snorts. “Do you know how long it took Hammer Tech to admit the radiation protection they had on the Mark I’s was inadequate? At least Stark Industries owned up to the tech issues with _Scarlet Cypher_ and paid up promptly.”

“Well, the later Mark IVs have everything up to and including escape pods. God only knows what the Mark Vs will have. _Kaiju_ -seeking missiles?” Alison turns to Wanda with a measuring gaze. “Do you know if they’re adding any mod cons to _Silver Hex_?”

“No.” Wanda has requested not to be assigned to her Jaeger – _former_ Jaeger – for repairs.

“They’ll give you first option, of course,” Alison says, knowledgeably. “The PPDC is all for reusing what we have. Plus, you’ve had experience driving her and repairing her, and she’s comfortable with you.”

“Wanda may not want it.” Carol is reasonable about it. “Not without her brother.”

\--

As the repairs to _Silver Hex_ near completion, the rumours only intensify.

“After all, a single woman in possession of a Jaeger _must_ be in want of a co-pilot,” quips Sam Wilson over breakfast to the tune of assorted amused and disbeliving looks. “What? I can’t read Jane Austen?”

“ _You_ didn’t read Austen,” Steve nudges him. “ _I_ did.”

“Same thing.” Sam tilts his head at Wanda. “Look, Steve and Natasha can give you the full run of what it’s like having someone else in your head. And Barton and I can tell you what it’s like living with someone else’s trauma as well as your own. But you gotta make this decision for you and nobody else.”

Wanda doesn’t quite agree; there’s someone else involved in this now.

Vish accompanies her up to the Conn-Pod of _Silver Hex_ , cleaned, repaired, and tested down to the last micrometer. He hasn’t said anything about the choice, carefully innocuous, casually tender.

She brushes her fingers across the familiar surfaces, then goes to stand in front of her harness, trying to remember the world as she saw it through her eyes and Pietro’s both. Shape and shadow, sea and sky, and the _kaiju_ before them, monsters in flesh and in mind.

Vish just stands by the door and watches her, his hands in his pockets, shirt points crisp over the knitted sweater he wears. He looks at once ridiculously preppy and sweetly solemn, and Wanda looks over at him. “Have you ever taken the psych test for Drift compatibility, Vish?”

“When I entered the Academy,” he says in that mild, even voice. “But we are not Drift-compatible, Wanda.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have seen your Drift profile and I know my own.” Vish’s mouth twitches. “And we would make a bad pilot pairing.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” He regards her with a solemnity that doesn’t disguise his tenderness. “Do you wish to pilot again?”

“No.” She looks from Pietro’s harness to her own. “And yes.”

Piloting would keep the memory of Pietro alive, close in her head, even if it was shared with someone else. Is that a selfish reason?

“Understandable,” is Vish’s answer when she puts the question to him. If he’s bothered by the thought of his lover sharing her thoughts with someone else, it doesn’t show in his expression or his demeanour.

“But still selfish?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She tilts her head at him. “You didn’t _not_ say it either.”

“Would it matter what I thought?”

It would hurt, she thinks, even as she says, “Of course it does.”

He stares at her for a moment, long and thoughtful, and then smiles. “But you will do it anyway, won’t you?”

–

With her name down as one of the prospective pilots for _Silver Hex_ , Wanda becomes the target for every Ranger who ever wanted to pilot and who thinks they might be able to match her.

It becomes a significant annoyance in her day, people sidling up to start conversations with her, ambushing her at meals, and even, once, waiting for her in the break room, before Vish sends the young man on his way.

Three days before the trials, Wanda finds herself taking refuge with two Rangers that even the boldest would-be pilots hesitate to cross.

“Guard up,” says Maria, giving Wanda barely enough time to lift her staff before attacking. The older woman’s style is measured and thoughtful, observing and noting everything. She counters Wanda’s fierce focus with steady, wary blocks, while her co-pilot stands to the side and chats comfortably with Sascha Kaidonovsky.

There are others training on the mats, but between the Kaidonovskies and the pilots of _Titanium Stiletto_ , Wanda is being left alone.

“Good, good!” Aleksis calls as Wanda gains a point on Maria. “More fire in the belly. Focus and control...”

Wanda wins that exchange, 4-1, then takes a break while Pepper goes up against Aleksis. Pilots generally like to mix it up in the Kwoon; while there’s nothing like dancing with one’s co-pilot, sometimes it’s good to be jolted out of one’s comfort zone. And while Aleksis has strength and reach on her side, Pepper manages a kind of cunning that manages to get around the power of Aleksis’ blows.

Pepper is two points up when Wanda catches movement in the corner of her eye; there’s a man standing in the entryway to the Kwoon, staring at her.

It’s not recognition. She’s never seen this man in her life before, but the sense of him is somehow familiar. From the look he’s returning her, wide-eyed and wary, it’s hit him much the same way.

She glances at the others, then edges around the Kwoon floor. “New?”

“Does it show?” The accent is disappointing – American. “So this is the Kwoon?”

“You’ve never seen it before?”

“Not around here.” He shrugs. “They transferred me in from Osaka yesterday; I’ve been in recovery for a while.”

“Ranger?”

“Yes.” Then he grimaces. “Sort of. It’s complicated.” He glances out to the Kwoon floor where Pepper and Aleksis have finished their bout, and Pepper is helping Aleksis off the floor, smiling as the larger woman grips her shoulder. “Feel up to showing me how it’s done?”

Wanda snorts. “You mean, do I feel up to giving you a chance to show off?”

“Like I said, recovery.” He stalks over to the rack of scarlet rods, dumping the long coat on one of the nearby benches. “But I’ll go easy on you if you like.”

Her lip curls in amused scorn at his teasing. “Of course you will.”

Already on his way to the rack, he jerks a little, his head turning a little as though in surprise before he continues on to take a staff and whip it through the air.

Wanda blinks. In just such a way had Pietro tested the staves he picked – a sweeping gesture of balance and reach. She shakes it away as the stranger drags off his boots, heedless of the tied laces and dumps them by the bench where he left his longcoat, before pulling off his socks and stepping out onto the floor.

She has enough time to frown before he turns in a whip-fast movement and lashes hard at her head. But Wanda’s already moving to block him, unthinking instinct driving her actions. Their sticks meet with a sharp clack of echoing wood. She meets his eyes, dark as her own, sees them narrow in surprised calculation. She arches her brows at him in challenge. _Going easy on me?_

His amusement is plain, even as he spins away.

Then the world narrows down to the clash of staves and the fluid movement of bodies, attack and counterattack, strike and block. Wanda’s almost forgotten the pleasure and frustration of Kwoon like this – the familiarity of compatibility with—

_No._

She lowers her staff in shock, even as his eyes widen and the blood drains from his face.

 _Aw, hell,_ she thinks – or thinks she does. Or is it _his_ —

“Pietro—?”

“Wanda—?”

They speak together, pause, then plunge on. “But you’re—”

They turn to the doorway, where Nick Fury stands framed in the entryway, his trademark coat on his shoulders, surveying them both with single eye.

“I think you owe us an explanation,” says Wanda’s companion. Does he realise he’s used the plural to express their mutual discontent?

Does it matter?

\--

“It’s ‘Peter’ by the way,” he says as they make their way through the Shatterdome halls. “I gave up Pietro when we moved to America.”

“Did your sister change hers?”

“No. Wanda—” He swallows the end of her name like it’s something he needs to get down fast. “Wanda always said that if they could learn to pronounce Tchaikovsky correctly, then they could learn to pronounce two syllables right.”

She huffs with laughter, thinking that, yes, she would have said that if the children at school had tried to come at her over her name. But things had been different in Sokovia; ‘Wanda’ and ‘Pietro’ were ordinary in the melange of names customary in a country that had been invaded and counter-invaded through the ages – a little piece of ground that was a staging ground for war at best, and the graveyard for armies at worst.

“How old were you when you came over?”

“Ten,” he says. “When the war broke out. You?”

“Eighteen.” She grimaces. “We stayed too long.”

And their parents were killed by a Stark Industries bomb, leaving them hostage under the bed for two days before rescue came. And then it was just the two of them, orphans in a world of war and bitterness. No need to tell him, he’d learn it soon enough—

But there her thoughts stutter to a halt. Just as well they’ve reached Fury’s office, where he closes the door behind them, then points at the visitor’s chairs.

“Guess you want an explanation.” He says it to Wanda rather than Pietr—Peter.

“I’ve worked some of it out myself,” she answered. “The Breach goes to at least one other dimension; why not two?”

“That’s the theory currently being argued by the various K-Science divisions, with respect to...all kinds of things, most of which I don’t want to talk about.” Fury shrugs as he sorts through paper forms for a tablet. “He turned up in a pilot evac pod floating above the Breach.” A few button presses and he hands her the tablet. “You’ll recognise the numbers, of course.”

The pod wasn’t a familiar make – ovoid rather than the rectangular ones that were being rolled out in the current set of Jaegers – but the numbers— “Yes,” Wanda swallows. Pietro never had a chance – the overload swept him away, one moment there, the next gone, and her heart was ripped from her breast—

A hand closes over hers. It’s not Pietro’s – the fingers are shorter and blockier: more like her father’s fingers, strong and square – but she and Pietro inherited their mother’s build – slender and supple. Yet the grip is the same; the pressure, the hold, the instinct to reach.

She looks across at Peter – the unfamiliar face that seems somehow familiar – and wonders what of his sister he sees in her.

“She kicked me out,” he says, as though Wanda asked the question. “The Breach was opening, we’d just fought a _kaiju_ , and she was going to make a run at another— _Hex_ had a nuke—” He looks at Fury. “You tried it, too.”

“We did. Didn’t get anywhere with it, but was worth the try.” Fury shrugged. “The nuke blew, and somehow you came through, giving K-Science enough data and possibility to chew on for the next fifty years – assuming we last that long. Which brings me to my next point. I’ve got a Jaeger sitting on the dock with no pilots.”

He looks at Peter, then at Wanda.

When they look at each other, it’s with the careful look of strangers taking measure of each other. Pilot pairings have been formed from less, but they’ve been more.

“Wanda was a fighter,” Peter says after a moment, his voice rough. “She didn’t kick me out to sit back and mourn. If I was likely to do that anyway.”

Wanda snorts. “I signed back up to pilot _Silver Hex_ , didn’t I?”

“You did. I’m just crossing my Ts and dotting my Is.” Fury leans back and there’s a satisfied smile on his face. “Guess you two are top of the list, then.”

–

He’s introduced to the world as Peter Lensherr after their paternal line – their biological father, not Django Maximoff.

_You didn’t know?_

_\--dinner, her father’s grimace as planes whine overhead—then the shudder and crash of the bomb—_

_How could we?_

They mesh in the Drift like old friends— _or siblings—_ and the whirl of his life passes by her eyes in a rush of fragments, some of them people she recognises, some of them strangers—

— _for two days, we wait for Tony Stark to kill us—_

— _the biological records come back a match and the doctor asks if they wish it to go on the record—family are always desirable matches for medical donations, but this is a complication they may not wish – a convicted criminal, a murderer, a terrorist, even if he now drives a Jaeger—_

— _a hard handsome face – and in it she sees the lines of Pietro’s pride—_

— _a steady, thoughtful face – more like her mother’s than her own—but with those same proud markings—_

And once their Drift connection is proven – with a few hitches as they accustom themselves to both similarity and difference, there is no question who will take the Jaeger.

— _a woman with reddish-blonde hair, her arm curving sweetly around his shoulder,_ Come back from this, and I’ll ask you to marry me _—_

— _the weight of Vish’s head resting against her shoulder the last time they slept together,_ I am here so long as you want me _—_

 _I’m sorry._ The apology flows through the Drift connection – he’s lost so much, not only a sister, but a world—

 _Aren’t we both?_ And the reassurance flows back – a little cocky, perhaps, but her brother was always the more snarky of the two of them— _Never mind,_ he says, and although the pain is still there, he skims them over it like a treacherous patch of ice on the way to school back in the Sokovian winter. _This is something we can do together, whatever we’ve lost._

 _Helping save the world._ She thinks of Pietro and is returned the bare-toothed grin of a Wanda Maximoff she'll never know outside of the Drift.

 _Damn straight_.

 


End file.
